Shocks; scares; an excellent attitude to horror as a genre and some excellent character observations render 28 Days Later one of the greats.

Rating: 9/10 (3 December 2009)

The streets are empty; the nation is crumbling, with cities either deserted or on fire; whatever event that has rendered the enemies of the film of the uncanny variety has been unleashed; only a small band of human survivors remain and nobody seems to have much of a plan. So arrived in cinemas back in 2002 a relatively familiar premise for a horror film, to be shot on digital video and staring a ragtag bunch of unfamiliar acting talent attempting to get across the raw fear and sensations of finding oneself in this predicament. The film was helmed by Englishman Danny Boyle; who was getting back to scuzzy, low level based pictures much in the vein of his earlier feature Trainspotting, this following the bleached out and visually alluring 2000 effort The Beach. It's to everyone's great credit that 28 Days Later holds up as one of my favourite horror films, and one of my favourite overall films of the decade.
With a 2007 sequel following it; a cast of actors who have since gone on to bigger and richer things as well as a director who has consequently churned out equally nourishing film-going experiences in Sunshine and Slumdog Millionaire, revisiting 28 Days Later after however long it's been is strangely humbling. Set on the "diseased, decaying island", as one character calls it, that is Britain; 28 Days Later gets across scares; knows when to provide the sequences of gore; is able to provide an adequate number of suspenseful set-pieces; knows how to pace and where to place its scenes of terror and realisation of the overall situation while its instances of comedy and attention to character are equally seamlessly woven in.
The film carries a very broad, quite epic feel to it. While similar in genre and premise, the film is the polar opposite to something like 2002's Resident Evil, or that respective film's first sequel. For all the money and gimmicks thrown at the screen in those films, what with their vast and expansive underground laboratory locales; lots of attention to fight scene aesthetics; inclusion of all things scientific and 'smart' sounding; nonsense narratives that flesh out into company cover-ups and so on, 28 Days Later works ten times as better with its stripped down and simplistic sense. It's to Boyle's great credit he achieves this with limited money and a shooting format more akin to student pieces than feature films due for cinematic release are. All the film does in vacate a location; spread a few discarded props here and there and bingo: you've got something is so simple yet so effective.
The film begins with found footage of riots; if we go into the film with knowledge of the premise, we might feel a little underwhelmed at the use of such footage to 'act' as a representation that the 'zombies' are taking over and that the world is falling apart. But no, these are VT's being pumped into the minds of chimps as a new 'rage' virus is tested in a science lab somewhere in England. Animal activists, however, have different ideas and when an infected chimp gets out – all Hell breaks loose. When we first see Irish protagonist Jim (Murphy), he is lying stark naked on a hospital bed, all by himself, with wires and tubes coming out of him from every which way. Jim's progression from vulnerable and somewhat pathetic looking individual; to hospital cloak-clad scavenger; to naive 'infected' thwarter; to someone who gets a grip on the situation, is developed flawlessly by Boyle in the opening half an hour or so. Jim's initial contact with an 'infected' sees him take an instinctive swipe at it – it's an instinctive trait that'll see him survive to the best of his ability. The study of Jim and his progression into a bigger and more brutal character is one of the film's many sequences of well observed substantial passages linked to character.
28 Days Later knows how to stop and it knows how to slow down in order give its characters room to breath and time to absorb their situation. Rather than opt for Resident Evil's kinetic energy, during which no one in the audience ever really feels as if any of the characters are in any danger of any kind, the film is driven by characters and their decisions. One is a male Irish lead and the other is his black, of Carribbean descent, female equal. She is Selena (Harris), a tough; hard-bodied; machete wielding foil to Jim whom saves his life twice and is begged a third time on a flight of stairs to do so again. We don't figure Selena to have been like this prior to the apocalypse, so a great deal has already happened to get her to this point. She is only ever really 'put in her place' when encountering figures whom represent the anti-thesis of feminism; that is to say, archetypes who want her to serve as someone that is useful for merely cooking and reproducing, as the re-population of Britain begins again from a disturbingly primitive starting point.
Regarding these types, those that drive the final third, their presence meekly calls to mind that somewhat interesting theory which I'm told inhabited James Cameron's 1986 film Aliens; that of the monsters being of one 'sort' of evil whereas certain human-beings representing another. In 28 Days Later, those that display levels of intellect or oppositional ideologies are shunned as the aforementioned ideas of a woman's "rightful" role in the world are played out as well – it all builds to a frightening climax. What with all this fascinating attention to character, role and predicament; Boyle remembers its genre cinema he's dealing with here and offers a number of scares and shocks anyway, giving the film a rounded sense. The film presents us with a familiar premise, but it's executed with such punch and such freshness that results in it just coming across as superb.